How can "Ode to a Grecian Urn" be said to be a poem written in the Romantic era by a Romantic poet?
please mention the essential characteristics of a Romantic poet and a Romantic poem and how this ode adheres to the precepts of Romanticism.
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A movement that emphasized emotion and intuition and the importance of the individual experience, Romanticism validated strong emotion as an aesthetic source of experience and knowledge. Certainly, John Keats's "Ode to a Grecian Urn" evinces many characteristics of a Romantic poem.
- Emphasis upon the dream, or inner world of the individual
The poet's observations of the Grecian urn elicits high emotion from him as he "listens" to "unheard melodies" that are "sweeter" of "Forever piping songs forever new/More happpy love!...."
- Valuing of intuition and emotion
The poet reaches beyond the rational and arrives at knowledge through feelings. The timeless perfection of the urn touches the aesthetic appreciation of the poet:
- Validation of strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience
Ah, happy happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu:
And, happy melodist, unwearied
Forever piping songs forever new
- A reach beyond the rational
There is a mysticism to the poet's contemplation of the urn as in his imagination the figures exist in an aesthetic eternity, expressing the truth of an ideal in a sententious statement:
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
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